Israeli Finance Ministers Says It May Be "Justified" To Starve 2 Million Gazans
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich suggested that blocking humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip would be “justified and moral” – even if it resulted in the deaths of two million Palestinian civilians from starvation.
Speaking at a conference in Yad Binyamin hosted by the right-wing Israel Hayom outlet, Smotrich lamented that the international community would not allow Israel to deliberately starve 2 million Palestinians in Gaza as a tactic to secure the release of Israeli hostages.
However, Smotrich stated that he personally believes such an extreme measure would be morally justified.
He said (via The Times of Israel):
We bring in aid because there is no choice. We can’t, in the current global reality, manage a war. Nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned.
Humanitarianism in exchange for humanitarianism is morally justified — but what can we do? We live today in a certain reality, we need international legitimacy for this war.
Smotrich said that blocking humanitarian aid from Gaza was more likely to get all the hostages being held by Hamas released, as opposed to the current hostage-for-ceasefire deal that is being negotiated and only ensures the release of some. He said:
Everyone wants to bring the hostages back, but the deal only gets a minority of hostages and condemns the majority. Therefore it’s not right and not moral and it endangers the nation.
He also said he was against releasing “terrorists” from Israeli prisons in exchange for hostages.
Smotrich said that while he supports Israel resettling Gaza, he hasn’t demanded that this be defined as one of the war’s goals.
He argued, though, that if Israel hadn’t pulled out of Gaza in 2005, the October 7 massacre would never have happened.
It is believed that 111 of the 251 Israeli hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 2023 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that.
Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 24 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
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